Escape
by Queen of Pascalities
Summary: It was 2:48 in the morning when I woke up. That was when we decided to leave. AU.


It was 2:48 in the morning when I woke up. The battery in my cellphone had just died, which was signalled by a really annoying ringing. I cracked an eye open and felt for it on my night stand. I heard my sister groan and shuffle in her bed, then she murmured "What time is it?"

I brought my phone to my face to see the numbers on the screen. The three luminous digits, innocent in themselves, sent a shiver of dread down my spine. In many households, 2:48 am doesn't mean much, except that they woke up really early and should go back to bed.

In this household, however, it meant my dad had just come back from where he usually spends his nights, where he'd spent all his nights of the last five years. It meant he was probably in the living room, a bottle in hand, having drunken, out loud thoughts of how he hated his job, and pretty much his whole life. It meant he probably could hear the ringing of my phone and was getting pissed at it, and in a few minutes, he would start yelling and barge in the room, insulting whoever he thought was bothering him, and then start throwing things at the walls.

It had happened many times in the last year, since our mother left him, but it didn't mean we were used to it. We were petrified when he burst through our bedroom door, shouting incoherent things about our lack of responsibility and respect towards others, secret boyfriends and parties we never told him about, which was followed by a string of insults that had me in tears in less than a second, tears that got my father to shout out more insults about me being a liar and crying fake tears. Then he threw the bottle he had in his hand on the wall over my head and stormed out, still yelling, while it smashed above me and soaked me in alcohol.

I turned to my sister, tears streaming down my face. She put a finger on her lips, gesturing me to wait in silence. Soon enough, we heard our dad slowly climb up the stairs, only mumbling incomprehensible things anymore, and walk into his room, where he crashed on his bed. After a few seconds, he started snoring.

My sister gave me a nod and jumped out of her bed. I didn't understand what she was doing at first, or what the nod meant, until she turned on the light and began to gather her things. That's when I got it. It was our plan; the plan we'd made a few nights back.

We'd decided we would leave. We'd pack our things, take one the cars – the one my sister and I used – and go live with our mother. We had to wait for the right moment, however, because we couldn't just pack while our father was awake. He'd stop us, and wouldn't mind using any means to do it. So we knew the right moment was at night, after he was sleeping. We'd never gotten around to fix a date or to even stay awake that late, so tonight was probably our only possibility.

I sprung out of bed, adrenaline rushing through my veins. During the past few weeks, my sister and I had arranged everything to make our escape easier. Every time we wore something, we'd instantly wash it the following evening. We'd placed our most prized possessions in our large travelling bags, and we'd snuck our trunks into our closet, so we wouldn't have to go get them on the night of.

I grabbed a few things and stuffed them in my bag. My wallet, my iPod, my watch, my dead cellphone, a few hygiene products, the stuffed animal I slept with, and other utilities like my passport, my laptop, my drawing pad and my pencil case. As I got to putting my clothes and shoes in my trunk, memories of the past year flooded my brain.

Our mom had left in the night, like we were currently doing. At that time, our father wasn't violent. She left him because of his drinking. She'd woken us up to bring us with her, but we'd foolishly told her we would stay and help our father. We thought we could get him to stop drinking. It turned out our mom leaving was the last straw for him. He eventually found out we knew about it and the fact that we hadn't tried to stop her triggered his first bout of verbal abuse. In the following weeks, he moved me out of my second floor room to go live in my sister's, on the first floor, and installed his office there.

It took us a few more months to realise that if someone could help him, it wasn't going to be us. That was when we'd decided to leave.

We knew our mom's new address, an information she'd only told us and we hadn't passed on to our dad, and we'd been talking through emails and rare phone calls since she left. We hadn't told her we were leaving, in case our father overheard or monitored our email accounts, but she'd made it clear that her door was open to us at any time without fully inviting us.

I zipped my trunk closed, then yanked my sweatshirt of its hook on the door and shove my arms through the sleeves. I warily listened for my dad's snoring, to make sure he wasn't waking up. My sister took hold of a few souvenirs off the shelves of our bookcase and put them in my bag.

"They're all so pretty and precious. You shouldn't leave them here."

At a time like this, I wondered why she bothered with simple cheap trinkets I'd bought on different trips. She kept repeating "They're so precious, so precious" and I realised she wasn't talking about the souvenirs anymore, but the actual memories of those trips, which happened when our father was still sober, when our family was still together and when our lives weren't so messed up.

I took two trinkets out of her hands and told her to go put things in the car. She instantly recovered her big sister status and grabbed a few bags around, dragging them towards the front door. It was almost a good thing I'd been ejected out of my room. I wouldn't have to climb down the stairs with my luggage, I could just bring it down the hallway to the door, without any risk of waking up my father with my inevitable tripping.

My sister came back to get my trunk and her blanket and pillow. We knew the drive to our mother's new house would be several hours long and we'd have to take turns to drive, and sleeping in the car would be much more comfortable with blankets, especially with the cold autumn weather. I packed a few more things, then hauled my travelling bag on my shoulder and grabbed my own blanket and pillow. I tiptoed to the vestibule, and grabbed my last pair of shoe, which I would only put on once in the car, so that I wouldn't make any noise to wake my father.

The front door was already open and I swiftly slipped through it. It was raining outside and the water on the ground soaked through my socks. I half ran down the steps to the driveway, where my sister was talking with someone. As I got closer, I recognised her boyfriend. She'd obviously called him to come help us and I appreciated his involvement. I didn't know him very well, but it was enough to know he would do anything for my sister and me.

I gave him a hushed greeting and went to put my things in the car. I heard my sister whisper to him that if out dad woke up before we left, he'd need to distract him long enough to let us escape, then she walked around the car, got in the driver's seat and turned the engine on. We all waited in fear to see if we'd woken our dad, but his bedroom window remained dark. The whole situation felt like an action movie, like Mission: Impossible. I was about to go back inside to check if we'd forgotten anything when I saw the lobby light up. I stopped dead in my tracks.

He'd heard us.

I saw him round the corner of the hallway and stumble to the door. My heart missed a beat. I wouldn't have moved if my sister's boyfriend hadn't walked up to me and told me to get in the car. As calmly as I could, I turned around and walked to the car, where my sister was waiting.

We got into our seats while we heard my sister's boyfriend start talking in a low, non-committal tone, which he probably used to keep our father calm. When I turned to look at them, I saw that it wasn't working. Our dad was getting agitated and was trying to walk past our saviour, who was struggling against him to keep him away from us. When I saw him lose the battle and my father start to walk toward the car, I pulled my door closed in a hurry and put on my seatbelt with shaking hands. I turned to my sister and she pressed the gas pedal, pushing the car forward, out of the driveway.

As we turned on our street, I looked back at my father and, in an access of hatred, flipped him the bird. It was a childish act, not very useful, and he probably didn't see it, but I couldn't resist and to do it was an incredible release. I turned back toward the windshield, where the wipers were erasing the raindrops that were blocking my sister's vision, and looked at the street in front of us as a sudden rush of exhilaration swarmed through me.

We were free.

I felt like laughing. And I did. My sister did too.

In the midst of our laughter, I remembered something.

"I forgot the cellphone charger," I deadpanned.

We were silent for a moment, then burst out laughing even harder. It was such a trivial thing to think about. I could really just buy another charger, or live without my phone for a little while. It didn't matter. My stomach hurt from my laughing, but if felt good. I hadn't laughed like that in years.

Eventually, our laughter died down. After a few minutes of silence, I finally wrapped my head around the enormity of what we'd just done, and m eyes welled up. I didn't know if my tears were happy or sad, but I let them fall down my cheeks, too exhausted to keep them in. My sister grabbed my hand. Being the older sibling, she was always tougher than me at emotional times, and today was no different. She didn't cry with me. But it was fine, really, because I knew one of us had the be the strong one and right now, it wasn't me, plus she was the one driving, so crying was not an option.

I had a thought for her boyfriend, who I hoped had escaped our dad's impending fury too. We'd call him later, just to make sure. The next few minutes, until we stopped, were spent in silence, as I cried quietly, without sobbing, something I didn't know I could do. I stared blankly ahead, at the dark road stretching in front of us.

We stopped at a gas station to call our mother. She didn't hesitate a second to appraise us when we told her we'd left home, and said she'd be waiting for us to arrive. She gave us her entire address, which we entered on our father's GPS that we'd stolen, and my sister told me to get in the back of the car and sleep while she called her boyfriend. I obliged, rolling up in my covers. I strapped the seatbelts around myself, then closed my eyes and drifted to sleep. I barely felt my sister restart the car and drive away.

I was the one driving when we got to our mother's house, and the sun high in the sky, although it was mostly hidden behind thick clouds. Her house was just like she'd told us; big, colourful, with a porch surrounding the first floor, wide windows, a large garden in front that was probably amazingly beautiful in full bloom, trees all around it, and the neighbours' houses were many feet away, which gave a rather big lawn and – I caught a glimpse of it – backyard.

Our mother was literally waiting for us in front of her house, sitting on her porch. I parked in the driveway, turned to the back of the car to wake my sister up, and half-jumped out of the car to run to my mother. I hurled myself at her, laughing and crying at the same time. My sister soon joined us and for a long moment we just stood there, hugging and crying. Then our mother helped us bring our luggage inside the house, and for the first time in five years, I felt safe and completely at peace.

I transferred into the local private high school for my last year. My sister took a year off from university and spent it helping her boyfriend to find himself an apartment in our new town. It turns out our father had threatened to beat him up, the night we left, but a neighbour has heard the commotion and called the police. He was now in a rehab center, having just missed going to jail, as my sister and I didn't press charges. We knew he didn't need to go to prison. It wouldn't help. Rehab would.

I met a boy in college. He was better than any guy I'd had a crush on before. I'd heard somewhere that it was common for girls to fall in love with someone that reminded them of their father. He wasn't anything like mine. That was what made him better. I eventually moved out of my mother's house to go live with him. My sister had married her boyfriend a few months before my departure and was travelling with him.

We never saw our father again. We heard from a relative that he'd mended his ways and met another woman, but we never checked up on him. He did the same toward us and we were thankful for it.

As my boyfriend and I unpacked my things in his apartment, I found a photo album that I suspected my mom had sneaked in one of my boxes. I opened it, curious. On the first page, there was a family photo of me with my sister and both my parents that dated back to when I was in elementary. The mere sight of my dad's cheerful face crushed my chest and forced a strangled sob out of my throat, as tears rose to my eyes at immense speed.

My boyfriend, no doubt upon hearing my crying, stopped whatever he was doing and approached me. When he saw the album, he grabbed it out of my hands and proceeded to rip out all the pictures of my father, which he then brought to the small fireplace in the living room where he lit them on fire. He came back to me and took me in his arms. It felt good, soothing, and I calmed down. It had happened in no more than two minutes, but the moment had felt like an entire lifetime. I gave him a kiss, grateful.

He was the last part of my escape.

_**A/N:**__ I dreamt part of that, last night. For real. I woke up at 2:48 because my cellphone was signalling me that the battery had died. I went back to sleep and dreamt of the whole drunk-dad-stressful-escape part. Then I woke up again at 5:28 and started writing it. That was the fastest-written story I've ever done. _

_You decide which characters are Sakura and Sasuke. They're not intended to be the parents, but if that's how you want to see it, then it's for you, really. Besides that, I haven't decided who was who._

_By the way, none of that is based on true events, I have an amazing father and my parents are still together. And I'm in college and I don't have a boyfriend._

_Review? Constructive criticism? Comments, questions, insults?_


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